Northampton High School graduate writes book about experiences in South Africa

Submitted photoRev. Jesse Zink plays guitar with friends in the Itipini Community outside Mthatha, South Africa.

NORTHAMPTON--A Northampton High School graduate has published a book about his two years working in one of the poorest communities in South Africa. The book demonstrates why it is critical to take advantage of young people’s passion for change and how to put it to work in the world around them.

In “Grace at the Garbage Dump: Making Sense of Mission in the Twenty-First Century,” Rev. Jesse A. Zink, an Episcopal deacon, tells the stories of his years working in a shantytown community on a garbage dump in an impoverished part of South Africa. Readers walk with him as he struggles with dying AIDS patients to get life-saving drugs, coaches women through a microcredit program, tutors students after school and teaches preschool students to sing and dance to “Johnny B. Goode.”

The book is published by Cascade Press, an imprint of Wipf and Stock based in Oregon.
The stories are hopeful and uplifting while also credible and serious. They lead the reader to a deeper understanding of the world and provide the grounds for reflection on how young people can be engaged with the problems of the world.

Zink graduated from Northampton High School in 2000. He graduated in 2004 from Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, where he studied classics and political science. The next year he earned a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Chicago.

After living in Nome, Alaska, where he worked as a news reporter at a radio station and was in the volunteer ambulance department, he moved to South Africa from 2007-2009 as a part of the Young Adult Service Corps program of the Episcopal Church, a program that matches young Episcopalians with other missionaries and churches throughout the world. “I was eager to see a different part of the world and respond, in some way, to some of the stories of poverty and sickness I associated with Africa,” he said.

Zink worked in a community called Itipini—the means "at the dump"--a shantytown community built on the site of a garbage dump. “It was built there so people could scavenge off the refuse and live in shacks they built themselves out of whatever is available,” he said. “As you can imagine, the socio-economic indicators here at not great—a high incidence of HIV/AIDS, for instance, high unemployment, high rates of poverty. So it is one of the poorest communities in one of the poorest parts of South Africa.”

At first, the experience was overwhelming to him because of the different culture, different language, different people. “I had shown up with such enthusiasm to ‘save the world’ and quickly realized I wasn't much help at all,” he said. “It was a frustrating, difficult, challenging and completely humbling experience. Here were people in such great need, people I wanted so desperately to be of some use to, and I could barely say hello to them or ask them their name.”

Over time—and this was the advantage of staying two years—he learned their language, Xhosa. He learned how he could fit in and be of use to people, and he learned that the experience wasn't so much about what he could do for others but about what they could learn from one another and how they could change in light of their meeting.

“I don't think I'm alone in having my desire to see change in the world,” said Zink, 29. “I think people of my generation are eager to serve others. That's why programs like AmeriCorps and Teach for America are so popular these days.”

This desire, he suggests, comes from a basic dissatisfaction with how things are, “combined with the mentality we've been raised with, especially in a place like Northampton, that we can do anything we set our hearts to.”

He learned, though, that it's easier to want change than to effect change. For example, when he was sitting with people who had late-stage AIDS, “I wanted so much to be able to snap my fingers and make the situation better,” he said.

He learned not to measure himself by his accomplishments—as he has been conditioned to do in a results-oriented society. Rather, he must find another measure, one of which for him was the quality and depth of relationships he built with people in Itipini, “people who at one point seemed so different than me but, when it came down it, when barriers began to crumble between us, are really not,” he said.

“I'm not sure I actually ended up giving all that much, or at least in a very effective way,” Zink said, because people still died, students still dropped out of school, and poverty was just as rampant in Itipini when he left as when he arrived. “But, I left with lots of hope for the future, if only we could begin to be honest with ourselves about ourselves and truly engage with those who seem so different than us, whether just down the street or halfway across the world.”

He wrote “Grace at the Garbage Dump” as an invigorating call to seize the passion of young people and respond to the challenges of the time in an active and
engaged way.

Published in March, the 182-page paperback retails for $21. It can be ordered at local bookstores or purchased online.

For more information, go to www.jessezink.com.

Upon his return, Zink entered Yale Divinity School and was ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church last December at Christ Church Cathedral in Springfield. He hopes to be ordained a priest this summer.

“Being in the church gives me sisters and brothers around the world, including in places like Itipini, whom I cherish and whom I want to work with and for as we seek to work towards peace and reconciliation in this world,” he said.